Delhi govt to pay Rs 8,000 each to over 90K workers hit by construction ban

The Delhi government decided on Tuesday to pay financial assistance of Rs 8,000 to each of the over 90,000 registered workers affected by the construction ban in the city due to severe air pollution.

The construction ban was imposed on November 18 under the Graded Response Action Plan measure to check pollution.

According to officials, the decision was taken at a meeting of the Delhi Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board chaired by additional chief secretary (finance) Ashish Chandra Verma.

The move comes in the wake of a recent Supreme Court direction to the chief secretaries of NCR states to appear before it through video-conferencing on December 5 and inform whether or not any subsistence allowance was paid to the construction workers who went without work owing to the restrictions.

An official document stated the Board "resolved" that an ex gratia amount of Rs 8000 may be released to all eligible construction workers after due verification of their status as construction workers.

The board also decided to fix November 25, the date of the court order, as the cut-off date for deciding the status of live membership of workers.

As such, 90,759 registered workers will be treated as tentative beneficiaries for the subsistence allowance as ordered by the Supreme Court. The amount will be deposited only in the Aadhar-seeded bank account of the beneficiary through the direct benefit transfer mode, the document said.

The Board also decided that workers eligible for the subsistence allowance would be physically verified.

The 90,759 tentative beneficiaries of the financial assistance are registered with the board based on self-certification that they worked for 90 days as construction workers in the preceding year.

The authenticity of self-certification is not verified at the time of registration of the workers. A bilingual link for the verification of construction workers has been provided on the web portal through which they can provide details for verification, said the document.

The registered workers were also sent SMSs and after getting their details for verification, the subsistence amount will be disbursed to their bank accounts, officials said.